Chapter 18
18
I surface from darkness to the press of a damp cloth on my forehead.
My thoughts are fuzzy, disconnected fragments refusing to form coherent patterns. My body feels both heavy and hollow, my insides scraped out and filled with lead. I try to lift my head, but even that small effort is impossible.
The coolness moves from my forehead to my cheek, then down to my neck, and a scent cuts through the fog, musky and familiar. A scent like home.
I peel my eyelids open, blinking against the harsh overhead light. A figure hovers above me, features blurring then sharpening into familiar contours. Golden-brown waves falling across a broad forehead, hazel eyes intent with concentration, an angular jaw tightened with concern.
“Raphael?” I croak, my throat raspy.
His features soften, tension melting into relief. He presses the washcloth to my temple again, wiping away sweat. “How do you feel, baby?”
I struggle to piece together his presence, the strange ceiling overhead, and the deep ache in my bones. “What’s...” I swallow, my throat dry as sandpaper. “What’s going on?”
Raphael sets the cloth aside and reaches for something out of my field of vision. “You’ve been sick for the last three days.”
The words are gentle, a tone I haven’t heard from him in years, and it confuses me.
“Here.” He returns with a glass of water, his free hand sliding beneath my head to lift it. “Small sips.”
The cool water eases the burn of my parched throat, and I drink until he pulls the glass away.
“Easy.” He sets the glass back on the nightstand. “Too much at once, and you’ll make yourself sick again.”
I try to push myself up, to gain a measure of control over the situation, but a sharp tug on my hands stops me. Metal bites into my skin, and a clinking sound follows my movement.
When I look up, I discover handcuffs encircle my wrists, a long chain looping through a rung on the headboard.
And I’m naked. Completely, utterly naked.
My heart kicks into high gear as fragments of memory click into place. The job I took for the Rockfords. Raphael fighting again by my side. Watching the life fade from him.
The burning pain and emptiness.
Raphael’s features harden. “You remember what you did now?”
My hand twitches, wanting to touch my nape before I force my fingers to still.
“Look at me, Avery,” he commands, cutting through my memories.
I do, taking in the body I know as well as my own. His broad shoulders stretch the seams of a wrinkled dress shirt, the rolled sleeves revealing forearms thick with muscle, and rough stubble shadows his jaw.
My body responds to him even now, without the bond, a Pavlovian reaction to years of yearning for his touch.
I lick my dry lips and look around, realizing we’re still in the safe house. “What are you doing here?”
“You gave me an ultimatum, and I answered.” He leans closer. “You won.”
My heart stutters. He can’t mean that the way it sounds, and I don’t have it in me to let him break my heart again. “How did you find me?”
Raphael’s laugh holds no humor. “You stole my car, which led me right to you. It’s the only reason I’m not more furious. You had to realize I have GPS trackers on all my vehicles. You didn’t ditch it somewhere else, which means some part of you wanted me to find you.”
My stomach drops. He’s right. I’d been sloppy, driven by pain and desperation. I tell myself I’d been too sick from the bond-breaking to think straight, but the truth scratches at me. I couldn’t go through with severing every link to the man sitting before me.
I change tactics. “How did you bypass the security?”
Raphael’s demeanor sharpens, a predator watching prey. “Do you really think I haven’t been tracking your every move over the years?”
He drops into a dangerous purr that sends a shiver down my spine. “I know the location of every single one of your safe houses. The codes, the security protocols, the escape routes.”
He leans forward, filling the air I breathe with his pheromones. “You never stopped being mine. Not even when I was stupid enough to let you go.”
The possessiveness sends contradictory reactions through my body. Anger and desire. Rejection and need. I pull away as far as the handcuffs allow, pressing my back to the headboard.
“I’m not yours.” The words sound hollow to my ears. “I broke the bond. It’s done.”
Raphael’s eyes trace a path down my body, lingering at my throat where my pulse beats rapidly, and the corner of his mouth lifts. “We’ll see how long you can keep up that lie.”
He unbuttons his shirt with deliberate slowness, revealing the sculpted chest I’ve traced with my tongue a thousand times before. A clock and gear tattoo covers his upper left pec and shoulder. A symbol of how many pieces are needed to make a machine work. He’d never suggested I get a matching one, and that had haunted me in all the years without him. It was a Rockford tradition, and I was never a Rockford.
Shrugging out of his shirt, he tosses it aside, and my pulse quickens with desire. I really have no willpower when it comes to this man and wanting him.
He grins. “See something you like?”
I scoff. “You wish.”
I yank at the handcuffs, welcoming the metal biting into my skin, the crescent indentations it leaves promising to last for days, erasing the bruises left by another Alpha and replacing them with marks that belong to my Alpha.
“The great Raphael Rockford, keeping tabs on me all these years while refusing to leave his mansion in Skyhaven.” My anger pours out with all the venom I’ve been storing since he walked away. “What, were you waiting for me to hit rock bottom? To come crawling back to you?”
Raphael’s hand shoots out, wrapping around my ankle, his grip firm but not painful. The contact sends an electric current up my leg, branching through my body like lightning seeking ground, and I shudder as those holes inside me try to knit themselves back together.
“I never wanted you to crawl.” His thumb moves to rest over my pulse point, where it races for him. “I wanted you by my side, always.”
I try to jerk my leg away, but his grip tightens. “Let go of me.”
He doesn’t. Instead, his thumb traces small circles over my skin, each stroke deliberate, hypnotic. I hate the way my body betrays me, how after everything he’s done, the simplest touch from him sets me on fire.
“I thought I was doing the right thing,” Raphael says, his focus unwavering. “When I agreed to Aaiden’s plan to go legitimate. The family business was under scrutiny. The feds were closing in on our weapons operations.”
His hand slides higher on my calf, his touch burning. “Aiden convinced me that the only way to protect the Rockford legacy was to cut ties with the underworld and focus on the white-collar operations.”
I stare at the ceiling, refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing how much his touch affects me. “And you didn’t think to discuss this life-altering decision with your partner? With your bonded Omega?”
Raphael’s jaw tightens. “I was wrong not to talk through the plan with you. I was an asshole to assume you’d just go along with my decision.”
The admission stuns me into silence. In all our years together, in all the confrontations we’ve had since, Raphael Rockford has never voluntarily admitted he was wrong .
“I was stubborn.” His hand moves up to rest on my knee, burning like a brand. “Too proud to beg for your forgiveness. And then...” He lets out a shaky breath. “Then I didn’t want to hurt you again when I still couldn’t give you what you needed. I couldn’t drag you back into my life if I was still tied to Aaiden’s vision.”
His fingers press harder into my skin, as if afraid I’ll slip from his grasp. “I watched you build your empire from the ashes of what we left behind. I saw you become a force to be reckoned with.” Pride fills his eyes. “I convinced myself to stay away, that you were better off without me. But you never stopped being mine.”
The confession rouses an ache I tried to smother, reminding me that despite everything, our connection was never just about the bond. Never just biology or fate or some other mystical garbage. We chose each other, again and again, even when it made no sense.
“It doesn’t matter now,” I say, trying to calm my racing heartbeat. “Whatever we were to each other, it’s over. The bond is?—”
I cut off with a yelp as his grip on my knee tightens, and with one smooth motion, he drags me down the bed. The sheet slides away as he pulls me across the mattress, my free arm flailing for purchase. I end up flat on my back, handcuffed arms stretched above me, legs spread with Raphael kneeling between them. The position highlights the contrast between my bare skin and his fully clothed body.
“Dying made me see the light, Avery.” His hands pin my thighs to the mattress, thumbs pressing into sensitive flesh with the perfect pressure to turn me to liquid under his touch. “I’m done playing by Aaiden’s rules. You win. I’m done pretending I can function without you.”
His eyes burn with hunger as they travel over my body. “And I have no plans to let you go. Not now. Not ever again.”
Heat blooms in my chest, spreading outward. The words I’ve waited years to hear, fantasized about during lonely nights when memories of him were all I had to keep me warm. My body responds with embarrassing eagerness, blood rushing south, skin flushing with want.
But he’s made promises of forever before.
I let out a bitter laugh. “Too little, too late. The bond is broken.”
His hands slide higher on my thighs, purposeful, possessive. Then one hand moves to cup my hardening length, applying enough pressure to make my breath catch.
“I was willing to accept whatever punishment you wanted to put me through.” His fingers wrap around me with familiar expertise. “Your anger, your resentment, whatever you needed to win back your trust.” His grip tightens, drawing a gasp from my lips. “But not this, Avery. You don’t get to break our bond and walk away.”
I try to close my legs, to hide my response to his touch, but his body between my thighs keeps me pinned open, leaving me bare in every way.
“You can’t force a bond.” My resolve wavers as his thumb circles the sensitive head of my dick. “It’s done. Over. Whatever grand reunion you’re planning isn’t going to happen.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, baby. We’re not leaving this safe house until you’re Marked again.” His free hand slides beneath me, lifting my hips. “Do you know what the symptoms are for a broken bond?”
I swallow, trying to ignore how his hand continues to stroke my hard length. “Pain. Fever. Nausea.”
Raphael leans forward, his bare chest brushing mine. “You’re leaving one out.”
His hand releases my cock to slide lower between my legs, slipping into my crease to find my entrance already slick with desire. He pushes two fingers inside me with practiced ease, knowing how to curve them to find the sweet spot that creates starbursts behind my eyelids.
“Heat.” His breath fans hot over my ear as he massages my prostate with devastating precision. “A broken bond triggers Heat to lure in a new Alpha. To make sure the vulnerable Omega finds protection.”
My inner muscles clench around his fingers, pleasure shooting through me in waves I can’t control. I bite my lip to keep from moaning, and the copper tang of blood bursts on my tongue.
Then his fingers leave me, and I cry out at the loss.
“Your body is calling for an Alpha.” Raphael’s pheromones thicken in the air, breaking down my defenses and reminding my body of what is missing. “And lucky for you, your Alpha is right here.”